The man keeps trying to remake possibly the greatest superpowers movie, and his latest effort is a TV show. This time his power is to be highly resistant to injury and catch things that move really fast and jump really high. Also, the gods of superpowers are very strange about how they dish these powers out: they make his palm bullet-proof, but not the back of his head! WTF? Any engineer who designed a machine with such a glaring flaw would be fired.

Also his wife, played by Julie Benz (who will hopefully not die leaving a crying baby in a puddle for once in her TV career), is really fast, and they seem to have been taking pains to explain how superspeed is possible (because that's her power, but she's a real jerk kind of superhero, since she messes up everything with her windshear as she runs by [is it necessary to superrun INTO the bedroom where your kid is doing his homework? Can't you run up to the house and go inside normally? {OMG, I'm sounding like my mother} ] ), by having her minion theorize away all the physics issues that would come up. And the assistant is the hot pro-life chick from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The show is not too bad, but it seems like Chiklis & Benz were in a hurry to get back to work after their awesome shows ended, and the creators didn't waste a lot of time coming up with non-superpower aspects of the story. Benz's job on the show: "She's a research scientist." Really? That's how her spouse introduces her and explains her job? What's her field? Science-ology? She manifests her sciencey attributes with comments like "In the world of science, we call it an unexplained phenomenom." Thank you, Dr. Scientist Lady!

And when Chiklis is not growling at people, he comes across as kind of a pansy-voiced whiner. Being short fat and bald doesn't help much, which makes you wonder if his wife got to know him first, or just watched The Shield before accepting his marriage proposal.

Aside from that, the show isn't bad. For a busy couple with all sorts of whiny & boring issues stressing their normal lives, they take the discovery of their superpowers pretty well. They are more realistic at the "kid on Christmas morning" thing than most kids are in movies about kids finding they had superpowers. It's amazing that anything I see Hayden Panatierohthehellwithit playing, there always seem to be adults having more fun with the same sort of character: Denzel Washington & Will Patton never look like they're having fun, but she made them look positively giddy in Remember the Titans, and Julie Benz's character would have been way more believable as a blonde kid who discovered she has a superpower than Claire was on the Bad Show That Shall Not Be Named (because after one episode, warts and all, this is still better than the Bad Show).

Also amusing are Benz's motor-mouthed henchwoman and Chikilis' best friend (guy who played Conrad from Weeds, who played the only decent human being on that show). That friend is a "district attorney" by which I am assuming they mean he is a lawyer specializing in a dying field known as district law, since he has a LOT of free time for a public prosector, which is what they USUALLY mean when they say district attorney. And how long has Chiklis had that job as a police sketch artist? In the first place, his "artistic" talents would not seem to come into play, since a computer is shown to do his job for him, and in the second place, what on earth made him think the police would do anything BUT laugh at his assumption that he could help them arrest a criminal? And by the way: failed painter, skinhead and frustrated believer in law & order? Does anyone else think a future character arc could involve his being an obvious reincarnation of Hitler?

Another thing I liked about the first episode: Minimal kid crap. Kids suck, they are boring, and I happen to be very familiar with the work of the actress playing their daughter (from The Unit, where she had minimal impact on the storylines because that show, despite its storylines about psychic phenomena and vanishing monasteries that house the Spear of Longinus, was one of the most realistic I have ever seen, because they know that on ife or death or national security issues, KIDS ARE USELESS AND MOSTLY ONLY CAUSE PROBLEMS. That's why there's abortion. Anyway, the kids have powers too, and despite about four scenes too many of the daughter obsessing over losing her boyfriend, both the kids' powers are purely cerebral and absolutely useless in a fight. That COULD mean the parents are going to do all the heavy action stuff on the show, and the kids are going to be made to shut up and stay home when their "acting" starts embarassing the creative staff on the show, and the only reason they actually have powers is to help bring the family together and provide a common bond, rather than enable them to fight crime as a team.

Also, the daughter's powers don't really fit. She can read thoughts when she looks into someone's eyes (slick limitation, BTW, since telepaths usually run into some really plausibility-twisting problems when the writers come down off their "how cool would it be to have a telepathic ____________ on the team/crew/force" high and realize that nearly every problem they come up with for the heroes could be solved with a judicious application of telepathy), which doesn't have much to do with her character or her issues. The father is all upset that he can't relate to his wife or kids or that they are leaving him behind, and he gets the power to catch stuff. He's overly sensitive and whiny, and now he's somewhat less sensitive to injury. The mother is trying to do too much at once, being a wife and mother and scientist and whatnot, and now she has the speed to do a bunch of stuff at once. And she can eat all she wants and still be as hot as Julie Benz. I'm not sure whose fantasy she is catering to here - women who wish they could get everything done right now and eat all they wanted, or men who are sick of waiting for their women to get ready/shop/finish cleaning when the game is on/climax (it is never expressly pointed out, but logically her power should work like that, too). The boy kid seems to be retarded, but maybe that was eye problems, since his power appears to be seeing the blackboard better in school.

However, the insecurities/ dissatisfaction with her parents that are bugging the girl kid would not appear to be solved or compensated for by her telepathy. Also, there are cliche issues: when she accepts that she has superpowers, she whines "As if high school wasn't hard enough." IT'S NOT HARD, TV PEOPLE! THAT'S WHY THEY LET TEENAGERS DO IT! STOP PRETENDING IT'S SOME MISERABLE EXPERIENCE!! But even setting that aside, a power that you don't have to use and that no one can see you using will not make your life any harder. All she has to do is avoid eye contact, and not only will her power not be noticed, but she'll blend in even better! The "problems" that come from her power are a result of her being an idiot in how she reacts to them. In fact, thanks to her power, she is able to extricate herself from a situation that has made her a laughingstock behind her back, learn the truth about one of her schoolmates toward whom she harbored unjustified suspicion, and COULD have done a better job winning the friendship of her teammates.

So if they're smart, they'll put the kids on the back burner and not let them have an equal vote in the family's doings. When you introduce a wildly unrealistic element like superpowers into a show, it is smarter to keep everything else as realistic as possible. This show actually references the X-men and Superman, so we don't have to spend half a dozen episodes with the characters in denial. They might not be comic book nerds, but they are aware that superheroes exist and what implications their own powers have.

To avoid going the way of other things, including the Bad Show, they should keep the real life lives from dragging down the powers stuff too much, and avoid the big stupid conspiracy arcs for a while. There is a hint of one in the pilot, but keep it to character development for a while, without getting too bogged down in life at the police station or the job demands of a Research Scientist but also don't spend too many episodes masturbating over the new powers and move on with the characters. The shoddy job the pilot did of explaining where the powers came from and what these people do suggests to me that these are not intended to be important issues and they should just move on from there. Julie Benz is smart and that's all we need to take from the Research Scientist. Michael Chiklis was a wannabe with rathr justifiable insecurities. We don't need to have the cops laugh at him in every episode or him trying to Do More To Help to prove to himself that he matters. Go on and live their normal lives with superpowers or have fun adventures, rather than getting bogged down in details they seem to have already decided to skip. There's places they can go with this, and it could be fun. Or it could suck long and hard, and Chiklis and Benz deserve better.

A few post-scripts:

- If I never ever hear another TV or movie character say "I know I haven't always been there...", well, I will probably still find things to complain about, but this would be good. By the way, what the hell kind of parent says that to a kid unless they were in prison, and unquestionably guilty? A parent's job is teaching the kids to be either successful in life (for the kid's sake), or a functioning member of society (for the rest of our sakes). You can't do that if you go around admitting fault and undermining your credibility! The ONLY way a parent should finish that sentence is with "...but I expect you to (act in a mature fashion/pick up the slack/meet your obligations) without me watching over your shoulder!"

Also, let's have everybody fill in the blanks with the rest of that sentence as it ALWAYS plays out on TV: I know I haven't always been there for you but ______________.

If you didn't fill it in with "I'm here now (rising whiny inflection)", I am thoroughly disappointed in you. Alternatively, congratulations: you might actually have a life, so why are you on this board?

- How did I watch every episode of six or seven seasons of a violent and gritty show like The Shield and see less Chikilis nipple than a one hour pilot on ABC?